Lang Policy (2009) 8:117–137

DOI 10.1007/s10993-009-9124-0

ORIGINAL PAPER

Assumptions behind Singapore’s language-in-education

policy: implications for language planning and second
language acquisition

L. Quentin Dixon

Received: 30 September 2007 / Accepted: 14 January 2009 / Published online: 27 February 2009

Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Abstract Singapore’s officially bilingual education policy, in which the majority

of children are schooled through a non-native medium with their ‘Mother Tongue’
(an ethnic heritage language that is not necessarily spoken in the home) as a single
school subject only, has resulted in dramatic language shifts in the population and
high academic achievement as measured by international comparison studies. Much
current second language acquisition theory would predict failure for such a policy.
This paper examines the assumptions concerning language planning and second
language acquisition underlying the city-state’s language-in-education policy, their
relation to current theory in the field, and how the case of Singapore can support or
challenge these different theories.

Keywords Bilingual education
Language planning

Language-in-education policy
Second language acquisition
Singapore

Widely hailed as an educational success story, Singapore, a multilingual island nation

in Southeast Asia, embraces an officially bilingual education policy. English is the
medium of all content-area education from the start of schooling, with students’
official Mother Tongue1 required as a single subject. Singapore’s education system
has gained worldwide recognition through its excellent results on international
comparisons such as the Third International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) and the
Progress in Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS; Elley 1992; Martin et al. 1999; Mullis
et al. 1999), making it a fascinating case study of government language planning
1
Because these languages are not necessarily the language children learn in the home, in this paper
Mother Tongue will be capitalized to indicate the Singaporean usage.

L. Q. Dixon (&)
Texas A&M University, 352 Harrington Tower, 4232 TAMU, College Station,
TX 77843-4232, USA
e-mail: qdixon@tamu.edu

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(see Dixon 2005 for a more detailed discussion of the empirical data). Although
successful in its ultimate academic results, Singapore’s language-in-education policy
rests on assumptions that are not always supported by current theories in language
planning and second language (L2) acquisition.
I will address the following questions in this paper: (a) what are the language
planning and L2 acquisition assumptions underlying Singapore’s language-in-
education policy?, (b) how do these assumptions reflect current theories in language
planning and second language (L2) acquisition?, and (c) what aspects of these
theories may be supported or challenged by the case of Singapore?

Background: the linguistic, economic and social context of Singapore

Language planning has played an important role in Singapore’s education and social
policies since separation from Malaysia in 1965. Singapore is comprised of three
major ethnic groups in the following proportions: Chinese 77%, Malays 14% and
Indians 8% (Singapore Department of Statistics 2001). These proportions have
remained stable since around 1900 (Chua 1964). In 1965 after gaining indepen-
dence, Singapore chose to become an officially multilingual state, selecting four
official languages: English, Mandarin Chinese, Malay and Tamil (Pakir 2000).
English is promoted as the ‘working language’ of Singapore for inter-ethnic
communication, while the other official languages are considered ‘Mother Tongues’
of the major ethnic groups (Rubdy 2001).
Although English was not spoken at home by the vast majority of Singaporeans at
independence, the appellation ‘Mother Tongue’ implies that those languages were
spoken at home. At independence, however, virtually no ethnic Chinese in Singapore
spoke Mandarin as their predominant home language; rather Chinese spoke a variety
of Chinese languages (termed ‘dialects’) such as Hokkien, Cantonese, and Teochew
(Afendras and Kuo 1980). Additionally, only 60% of Indians in Singapore in 1957
spoke Tamil as their home language; others spoke Malayalam, Telugu, Hindi, Punjabi,
Bengali, Urdu and Gujarati (Afendras and Kuo). Only Malays were assigned a Mother
Tongue that corresponded to the language they spoke at home. Examining the
economic, social and political situation around the time of Singapore independence
will help explain the choice of these languages as official languages in Singapore.

The economic, social and political situation in 1965

In 1959, Singapore gained self-rule from Britain and prepared to merge with
Malaysia. Merger occurred in 1963, but political disagreements led to the separation
of Singapore from the federation in 1965 (Tan 1997a). Singapore, a nation of only
637.5 km2 (CIA 2001) amidst much larger, belligerent neighbors, faced great
uncertainty as it gained an unanticipated independence. Political leaders and
observers around the world gave it little chance for success (Kissinger 2000).
In 1959, as Singapore prepared for self-rule, per-capita GDP equaled only
US$400 (Lee 2000). At that time, Singapore’s economy was dependent on trade,

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mostly importing, processing and then exporting other countries’ goods (Singapore
Government 1965). Indonesia, up till then Singapore’s second-largest trading
partner, imposed a trade embargo on Singapore and Malaysia in 1963 due to
Indonesia’s opposition to the formation of Malaysia; after separation, Malaysia,
too, wanted to bypass Singapore’s ports (LePoer 1991). Consequently, Singapore’s
entrepôt trade dropped by 23% (Singapore Government 1966). At the same time,
an estimated 7.4% of the population was unemployed, a majority of them young
people (Singapore Government 1966). With over half of the population in 1965
under the age of 20, the problem of youth unemployment was serious, demanding
job-creation rates of at least 3% a year simply to keep the unemployment rate
stable.
With no natural resources of its own, and its traditional entrepôt-trade function
undermined by its neighbors, Singapore needed to transform its economy rapidly
(Yip et al. 1997). Singapore worked to increase its industrialization, by extending
the necessary infrastructure of roads, power, water, port facilities, and industrial
facilities; and by encouraging new manufacturers to settle in Singapore (Singapore
Government 1966).
Social conditions also appeared unstable. The British had kept the three major
ethnic groups geographically and ethnically divided (Kwan-Terry 2000). During
disputes with Malaysia in 1964 over new laws for the union with Singapore, race
riots broke out in Singapore between Malays and Chinese (Tan 1997b). How could a
tiny, fractious nation, plagued by poverty and unemployment, survive with hostile
neighbors? And how would the sensitive issue of language be dealt with in this
fragile, multilingual, racially-divided city-state?
Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore from self-rule until 1990 (Govern-
ment of Singapore 2006b), cited economic reasons as the impetus behind his party’s
decision to choose English as an official language in newly-independent Singapore
and the government’s encouragement of English as the language of inter-ethnic
communication (Lee 2000). Lee recognized, however, that the language of the former
colonial power could not be the sole official language of the new nation. Thus, three
additional languages, chosen to correspond with the major ethnic groups, were also
selected as official languages. Mandarin was selected for the Chinese because it had
already gained status as the language of educated Chinese since the introduction of
Mandarin-medium schools in the early 20th century. Tamil was selected as the
language of the largest Indian ethnic group, and also the language with the longest
history of education in Malaysia and Singapore. Malay was the obvious choice for the
Malay ethnic group.
Although the Prime Minister of this new fledgling nation believed that only
mastery of the English language would bring Singapore the international trade and
investment it needed as well as access to Western science and technology, he knew
for political reasons that he could not force the population to all attend English-
medium schools, nor seem to elevate English above the three other ethnic ‘Mother
Tongues’ (Lee 2000). Instead, he adopted a policy that allowed parents to choose
the language in which their children would be educated but required students in non-
English language streams to study English as a subject and students in the English
language stream to study one of the other official languages as a subject.

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Singapore’s language-in-education policy

In 1966, parents could choose education through any one of the four official
languages (English, Mandarin, Malay, Tamil) but all students also had to study one
of the other official languages, English for students in the non-English-medium
schools (Yip et al. 1990). The government subsequently required all schools to teach
math and science in English starting with first grade. By 1979, parents, engaging in
‘invisible language planning’ (Pakir 1997), stopped enrolling their children in
Malay- and Tamil-medium schools, and Chinese-medium enrollment was down to
about 10% of the entering cohort (Yip et al. 1990).
The government then adopted the bilingual education policy that is, with a few
modifications, currently in place: All students study their subject-matter curriculum
through the medium of English, but they are also required to reach a ‘second-
language’ level of proficiency in their official Mother Tongue—Mandarin for
Chinese, Malay for Malays and Tamil for Dravidian-speaking (Tamil, Malayalam)
Indians (Yip et al. 1990). For Indians who speak non-Dravidian languages at home,
Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Urdu and Gujarati are offered as options for Mother Tongue
study in ‘‘community-run weekend … classes’’ (Saravanan 1999). Though the
government has provided national examinations in these low-incidence languages
since the 1990s, government funding to support the teaching of these languages was
not available until 2008 (Ministry of Education 2007b).
Currently, roughly 95% of students are permitted to study Mother Tongue at a
higher level according to their interest (Ministry of Education 2006). In addition, the
lowest track has been eliminated and replaced by ‘subject-based banding’ starting in
2008 (Ministry of Education 2004). This new type of tracking allows lower-achieving
students to be placed according to their level in each of the four subjects tested:
English, Mother Tongue, math, and science.
At the end of 6 years of primary school everyone takes the Primary School Leaving
Examination (PSLE). Previously, the students’ results on this exam determined their
placement in specified courses of study that, among other things, affected their access
to different levels of Mother Tongue language study. Prior to 2006, the top 10% of
students according to their PSLE results went into the Special stream, which allowed
them to study Mother Tongue at a more advanced level, while about 50% entered the
Express stream and studied Mother Tongue at a ‘second-language’ level. Expecta-
tions for Mother Tongue proficiency for the approximately 40% of students in the
Normal (Academic) and Normal (Technical) streams were even lower. Gradually,
the option to study Mother Tongue at a more advanced level was expanded to include
the top 11–30% of PSLE takers who did well in their Mother Tongue exam, until the
Ministry of Education announced that schools would be able to allow any student to
study Mother Tongue at a higher level ‘‘if they are assessed to have exceptional ability
in MTL [Mother Tongue Language] and are able to do HMTL [Higher Mother
Tongue Language] without affecting their performance in other subjects’’ (Ministry
of Education 2007c).
Admission to local universities is partly determined by Mother Tongue exam
results. All three universities require Mother Tongue results of their local applicants;
for the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang Technological

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University (NTU), taking ‘Higher Mother Tongue’ or obtaining better grades in

Mother Tongue provide an applicant with ‘bonus points’ for admissions. Students
who first attend a polytechnic and obtain good grades, however, may bypass this
Mother Tongue requirement.
Because Singapore’s government has been dominated by a single political party,
the People’s Action Party (PAP), since independence, continuity in language planning
and education policy has been possible. The PAP term their approach to governing
‘pragmatic’ (Wee 2002) and tweak their policies as conditions change. In framing and
justifying its language-in-education policy, the Singapore government relies on some
explicit, and many implicit, assumptions concerning language planning and second
language acquisition. These assumptions are examined below in light of current
theories in these fields.

Assumptions about language planning underlying Singapore’s policy

Some of the major assumptions regarding language planning underlying the policy
include:
A. Language is a tool that should be carefully chosen for its utility to the national
interest.
B. A ‘language’ is different from a ‘dialect;’ only standardized languages are
appropriate vehicles for education.
C. The government should encourage the use of high-status languages at home
and in social interactions.
These assumptions contain an interesting mix of instrumentalist, prescriptive and
sociolinguistic orientations toward language planning. As seen in Assumption A, the
Singapore government takes an instrumentalist’s view of language as a tool (Tauli
1968) that should serve the national interest. In addition, the Singapore government
takes a strongly prescriptive view of what constitutes a ‘language,’ in both written
and spoken forms, that is appropriate for education (Assumption B). On the other
hand, the Singapore government seems to have often followed or encouraged
the prevailing sociolinguistic trends in promoting its policies (Assumptions A, B
and C).
Instrumentalists view language as a tool or instrument, and believe that languages
or features of a certain language can be objectively evaluated to determine which
is more efficient for different language functions (Appel and Muysken 1987).
Instrumentalists do not assume that the existing literary language is the best vehicle
for education, since a literary language may be based on an archaic form or register of
the language (Appel and Muysken 1987). Instrumentalists view written language as
subordinate to oral language and urge the use of the simplest and most efficient forms
of the language, whether derived from ‘dialect’ or a more prestigious language form
(Tauli 1968). While in reality an existing literary language may command high status,
such a language often contains inefficient, archaic forms; instrumentalists support
the development of a simpler, more efficient standard written language from the
vernacular, despite its lower status (Tauli 1968). While urging a rational, objective

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approach to this type of language planning, instrumentalists also recognize that

political realities may interfere with the immediate acceptance of a lower-status
language; in this type of case, a reform of the literary language to bring it closer to the
vernacular is suggested.
Thus, Singapore’s officials followed an instrumentalist path by considering the
major languages in use in Singapore at independence and deciding that only English
could help Singapore industrialize and modernize its economy (Yip et al. 1990).
However, Singapore did not determine that English was better suited to these
purposes based on its linguistic characteristics, such as any advantage in simplicity or
clarity compared to the other languages. Rather, the government chose Singapore’s
working language based on the economic benefits the government believed English
could convey, due to its status as the language of many international corporations and
centers of scientific and technological innovation (Lee 2000).
Although taking this instrumentalist view, the Singapore government also gauged
the sociolinguistic situation in society and implemented their language-in-education
policy in stages, as described in the quote below from then-Prime Minister Lee
Kuan Yew, the major architect of the policy:
To announce that all had to learn English when each race was intensely and
passionately committed to its own Mother Tongue would have been
disastrous…. Not wanting to start a controversy over language, I introduced
the teaching of three mother tongues, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil, into English
schools. This was well-received by parents. To balance this, I introduced the
teaching of English in Chinese, Malay, and Tamil schools. Malay and Indian
parents welcomed this but increasing numbers preferred to send their children to
English schools. A hard core of the Chinese-educated did not welcome what
they saw as a move to make English the common working language, and they
expressed their unhappiness in the Chinese newspapers. (Lee 2000, p. 146)
Although some Chinese resisted the move toward more English in schools and
society, a majority of Chinese parents chose English-medium education for their
children at the time, with an increasing proportion choosing English as the years
progressed (Chiew 1980). The policy thus followed the sociolinguistic trend of
parents sending their children to English-medium schools rather than trying to resist
or even prematurely hasten them.
In this way, the Singapore government seems to have taken the sociolinguistic
approach in looking at the whole context (Appel and Muysken 1987) of each
language present in Singapore, while rejecting sociolinguists’ assertions of the
equality of all languages (Eastman 1983). Sociolinguists argue that no dialect or
language is inappropriate for classroom use, as all language varieties are inherently
equal (Appel and Muysken 1987). The lack of trained teachers, textbooks or other
teaching materials in a certain language may pose a practical barrier but does not
indicate that a certain language variety or ‘dialect’ is in itself inferior to a language
that has already developed such supports.
At the same time, however, the Singapore government engages in a prescriptive
approach to the appropriate languages its citizens should speak at home and at
school (Assumptions B and C). With regard to English, the Singapore government

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actively encourages the use of ‘Standard’ (British) English over a localized variety
of English, often called ‘Singlish,’ through its ‘‘Speak Good English’’ media
campaign (Chua 2004). In addition, the Singapore government promotes the use of
Mandarin over dialects with its ‘‘Speak Mandarin’’ campaign (Kuo 1984; Newman
1988; Chua 2004). In each case, the government recognized only the variety of the
language already associated with education in Singapore.
Prescriptive linguists seek an ‘ideal’ or ‘pure’ language for governments and/or
national language academies to define and defend (Eastman 1983). They support the
assumption that the high-status variety of a language should be encouraged in the
population. Sociolinguists, on the other hand, argue that written language is always
more conservative than oral language, leading to more than one ‘correct’ oral usage.
Sociolinguists would point out that in every society, different registers of the same
language are in daily use by native-speaking populations for different purposes
(Eastman 1983). Trying to confine a population to one standard usage is unlikely to
be successful, as oral language is a dynamic, living system that is constantly open to
negotiation and change. Different registers of English currently in use in Singapore
are well-documented (Pakir 1999), lending support to the sociolinguistic theory. In
this case, the Singapore government is actively trying to reverse the sociolinguistic
trend toward more use of Singlish among Singaporeans, emphasizing the economic
utility of Standard English over Singlish (see Lui 2006).
In the case of Chinese, only Mandarin Chinese was considered a ‘language,’
while other varieties of Chinese (such as Hokkien, Teochew and Cantonese),
understood by many more people in Singapore prior to independence, were
considered ‘dialects,’ unworthy for use in the educational or other official domains
(Pakir 1997). Children’s linguistic resources were largely ignored by this policy. For
the Chinese majority, who in the beginning mostly came to school dominant in a
Chinese dialect that reflected their specific cultural heritage within China, dialects
were seen as an impediment to learning Mandarin Chinese and English (Lee 2000).
However, Newman (1988) reports that a proficient Hokkien speaker, drawing on
analogies between the two languages, would be able to predict the Mandarin tonal
pronunciation of a given word 90% of the time; but this potential advantage in
learning Mandarin was dismissed in favor of urging all Chinese to use Mandarin at
home and with other Chinese.
Because this promotion of Mandarin at the expense of dialects was begun prior to
Singapore independence as a result of fervor from the Chinese nationalist movement
at the beginning of the 20th century (Ang 1999), the Chinese populace of Singapore
seemed to accept this government policy and view Mandarin as the only proper
language of Chinese education. Although denying that Mandarin would be in any
way ‘superior’ to other varieties of Chinese for educational purposes, sociolinguists
would predict that such a language policy would have better odds of being
successful, as language policies promoting low-status languages are often resisted
by the population (Haugen 1971).
Similarly, at first classical Tamil, rather than the colloquial variety of Tamil
actually spoken in Singapore, was chosen as the official variety promoted by the
government and used in the schools. Recently, the policy changed; apparently due to
recognition that students struggled with the classical variety, the colloquial variety

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was officially adopted as the language of instruction for Tamil in Singapore

(Ministry of Education 2007a). In addition, the initial policy that all ethnic Indians
in Singapore must study Tamil was relaxed to allow students to study their actual
home or heritage language outside of school to fulfill their Mother Tongue
requirement; recently, the government started providing funding to help support the
teaching of low-incidence Indian languages (Ministry of Education 2007b). These
changes in the policy regarding Indian Singaporeans indicate a slight move away
from the assumptions listed above.
Whether or not instrumentalists would support Mandarin over ‘dialect’ education,
therefore, depends on whether written Mandarin meets the criteria of economy,
efficiency and clarity (Tauli 1968) better than the various dialects, not on its existing
status as the language of Chinese education. Instrumentalists would agree with the
Singapore government’s adoption of spoken Tamil over classical Tamil for use in the
classroom, as the vernacular is more widely understood and probably simpler and
more efficient in its expression. Sociolinguists, however, might point to the trend for
more Indian families to speak English at home as indicating that even the switch to
colloquial Tamil in the classroom may only slow, rather than reverse, the shift to
English. Only Malay seems to be the appropriate choice whether from the
instrumentalist or sociolinguistic point of view, given the congruence between the
language spoken in Malay homes and that taught in the classroom. However, even
Malay is losing ground to English, particularly in high socioeconomic status (SES)
households (Aman 2007 ISB6 presentation).
The success2 of Singapore’s English-language policy may be attributed to the
high status of English. Instead of imposing any one language as the medium for
education, the government offered parents a choice of language stream, then
followed the parents’ choice of English as the medium of education for their
children, thereby allowing sociolinguistic trends to shape the evolution of the
policy. Now that more children are learning Singlish as a first or early second
language, however, the question is whether the government’s effort to promote
Standard English will succeed in defying the sociolinguistic trend toward more
Singlish use (Stroud and Wee 2007).
The promotion of Mandarin as a high-status language for the Chinese ethnic group
has lead to dramatic shifts away from Chinese dialects and toward Mandarin in home
and interactional use (Rubdy 2001), although some studies indicate the level of
Mandarin proficiency, particularly in writing, is not uniformly high (Hsui 1996;
Cheng 1997). However, the promotion of classical Tamil as the ethnic language for
Indians was less successful, leading to the recent change in policy to the use of spoken
Tamil in the classroom. One survey of Tamil teachers indicates that Standard Spoken
Tamil, a variety developed among educated Tamil speakers, may be well-accepted as
an appropriate medium for education (Saravanan et al. 2007). Only time will tell if this
policy will lead to greater student success in Tamil language classes, perhaps
reversing the trend toward English-dominance in Tamil Indian households.

2
The success of the policy is not uniform. On average, Singaporean students have done extremely well in
education by international standards. However, there is an achievement gap among the different ethnic
groups, which may stem from socioeconomic differences (Stroud and Wee 2007).

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Assumptions about second language acquisition underlying

Singapore’s policy

Beginning a second language early leads to higher proficiency

Singapore’s policy of emphasizing L2, English, from the beginning of formal

schooling apparently stems from a belief that children learn English better the
earlier they start learning the language. Lee Kuan Yew, then-Prime Minister, urged
parents to teach their children English ‘‘as early in life as possible’’ (Lee 1982, p. 5).
More recently, Goh Chok Tong, Prime Minister of Singapore 1990–2004
(Government of Singapore 2006a), kicked off the 2000 Speak Good English
Movement with a speech including the following comments:
It is best we learn to speak good English from young. Learning to do so when
we are old is more difficult, but it can be done and is worth the effort.
(Goh 2000)
The assumption that beginning a second language early leads to higher proficiency
is a commonly-held view (Marinova-Todd et al. 2000). This assumption jumps right
into the heart of the hotly-contested critical or sensitive period hypothesis debate
among second language acquisition researchers. The critical period hypothesis
refers to the view that there is a critical (or sensitive) period for language
acquisition, usually set at puberty, after which learners find it difficult if not
impossible to acquire a second language at native-like levels of proficiency. While
many studies established an advantage in pronunciation for younger language-
learners (Oyama 1976/1982) and perhaps grammar (Bialystok 2001), evidence is
mixed as to whether age of exposure to L2 determines successful outcomes in other
areas of second language acquisition (Bialystok and Hakuta 1999; Marinova-Todd
et al. 2000; Garcia Mayo and Garcia Lecumberri 2003).
Since adults have been observed to achieve very high levels of proficiency in a
second language (Birdsong 1992; Marinova-Todd et al. 2000), any strict biological
view of a critical period is clearly untenable. However, many studies have
demonstrated an apparent advantage for younger language learners in immigrant
immersion contexts (Johnson and Newport 1989/1995). By contrast, studies of
children beginning English as a foreign language in school settings show a
significant advantage for those who begin their study later, holding number of hours
of instruction constant (Garcia Mayo and Garcia Lecumberri 2003).
The Singapore context, however, is perhaps more similar to a foreign-language
school immersion program. Because the majority of Singaporean citizens are not
native or first-language speakers of English, students receive less home and street
exposure to English compared to language minority students in a more monolingual
country such as the US or Canada. Although the contexts are different, Anglophone
children in the strongly bilingual city of Montreal in the French-speaking province
of Quebec, Canada, provide a potential comparison group to young non-English-
speaking or bilingual children in multilingual Singapore. Comparisons of early- and
late-entry French immersion programs for Anglophones in Montreal indicated that
by grades 10 and 11, students with very different amounts of French language

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exposure performed the same on measures of French listening, reading, writing and
speaking skills (Swain and Lapkin 1982). Students in the early total immersion
program dropped to 40% French exposure in grades 4–11; students in the late
immersion group had minimal exposure to French prior to grade 7 (approximately
30 min a day) followed by 80% or more of their instruction in French in grades 7
and 8. In this example, the early-starters did not perform better than the late-starters
despite a larger number of accumulated hours of French instruction.
In reviewing the relevant literature on the critical period hypothesis, Marinova-
Todd et al. (2000) conceded that younger learners as a group outperform older
learners as a group; however, the existence of highly proficient older learners raises
questions about what factors explain the more variable outcomes of older learners
rather than confirming a biological advantage for younger learners. These findings
do not point to an absolute advantage to starting study of an L2 early in life; since
some older learners also attain high levels of proficiency, the question is why
younger learners generally achieve higher levels of L2 proficiency than older
learners and whether an instructional program or immersion experience can be
designed to improve the ultimate attainment of older learners.
Some second language researchers argue that differences in input to child and
adult second-language learners account for their differences in ultimate L2
proficiency. Supporters of this input hypothesis argue that the quality of input,
not the age of the learner, is most important to ultimate L2 attainment (Krashen
1982, 1985). By this theory, L2 acquisition could begin at any age; the teacher’s role
would simply be to provide the proper input to help students (young or old) achieve
proficiency.
The policy implications of this assumption are clear: if earlier is always better,
then it is essential to provide English-language instruction in Singapore at the start
of formal schooling (or before). However, considering the importance of quality of
input and the possibility that fewer hours lead to good results in Canadian
immersion programs, a prudent policymaker might decide to delay the introduction
of English immersion in Singapore in order to concentrate its most English-
proficient teachers with older learners. Singapore’s overall success with English
instruction starting at an early age lends support to the earlier-is-better assumption;
however, because Singapore has not experimented with the introduction of English
at different ages to determine the optimal age for its introduction, the success of its
program cannot be said to be caused by the early introduction of English.

Home language development is not academically helpful to development

of English language skills

Lee Kuan Yew believed the path to academic success in English was to use English
more. After presenting correlational data indicating that ‘‘the more English is used
at home, the better the performance in EL1 [English studied at a ‘first language’
level],’’ Lee urged Malay parents to speak more English at home:
Parents have to decide on the trade-off between the convenience of speaking
in Malay or the mother tongue at home with their children at the cost of EL1.

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If they want their children to do well in EL1, their children must also, besides
Malay, speak English at home. (Lee 1982, p. 5)
With a major shift in home language from Mother Tongue (and others) to English in
Singapore, the government changed focus from urging English use at home to
urging use of ‘‘good’’ or ‘‘Standard’’ English (rather than Singlish) at home:
Now, 1 in 2 pupils in Primary One [first grade] speak mostly English at home.
However, we realize that many Singaporeans are not aware that they are not
speaking Standard English. This in turn impacts the way their children pick up
English.
Parents are very important role models, particularly so in the early years of a
child’s development. I would encourage parents to read good books to their
children so that their children develop an ear for good English. If they are not
comfortable with English, they can speak their mother-tongues with their
children so that their children will develop the ability to communicate well in
their mother-tongues. (Lui 2006, p. 3)
Although in this statement home use of Mother Tongues was mentioned,
development of Mother Tongue was not discussed as potentially beneficial to the
learning of English. Speaking Mother Tongue at home was depicted as helping
children attain the secondary language goal of the Singaporean education system,
that is, proficiency in Mother Tongue. This assumption contradicts the transfer
hypothesis, which posits that academic skills learned in one’s home language are
easily transferred to L2 and that a high level of development of the child’s home
language aids in attaining high levels of proficiency in L2, and vice versa (Cummins
1979, 1981, 1991). For example, concepts learned in one language are easily
transferable to another language once the new vocabulary is learned; also, reading
comprehension strategies and other kinds of metacognitive skills learned through
one language can be readily accessed in L2, provided sufficient proficiency is
developed for the tasks in L2.
Singapore’s solution to the problem of a difference between home language
and school language is to change families’ home languages, rather than provide
schooling in the students’ original home language. While overall, Singaporean
students’ educational achievement is high (in international comparison studies), it is
unknown whether Singaporeans would perform at even higher levels were home
language development provided (for those who are learning two non-home
languages at school) or emphasized (for those who have only one subject in their
home language).

More time devoted to learning a language will result in greater proficiency

in the language

When Singapore used four languages as media of instruction, English was taught as
the common L2 in the non-English-medium language streams. When the students
were not achieving a high level of proficiency in English, the government required
mathematics and science to be taught through the medium of English at all schools

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(Yip et al. 1990). Although the landmark Report on the Ministry of Education (Goh
1979) cited evidence that this strategy was not improving students’ English
proficiency and in fact had led to a decline in science achievement among Chinese-
medium students, Lee Kuan Yew specifically took exception to this finding in his
response to the report:
Your team concluded that LET [Language Exposure Time] did not improve
standards of English in Chinese-stream schools although Science and
Mathematics were taught in English… This is contrary to my own learning
experience and my personal observations of students. The more you hear a
language spoken, the easier it is for you to understand and to speak it…. (Goh
1979, p. vi)
Lee held on to the assumption that it is time on task rather than quality of input that
is key to learning a language. While a large body of educational research supports
the time-on-task assumption for reading and other subjects (Snow 1990), learners
with the same amount of classroom time devoted to L2 show different levels of
proficiency, with older children showing an advantage in rate of acquisition (Swain
and Lapkin 1982; Harley 1986). Thus, exposure time is not the only factor in second
language acquisition. Learner characteristics and type of input must also be taken
into account.
As discussed above, the transfer hypothesis indicates that much learning acquired
in one language can be transferred to another (Cummins 1991). If many of the
concepts, strategies and skills Singaporean students could learn in their Mother
Tongue can be readily transferred to English, time-on-task in English diminishes in
importance for overall educational achievement. Instead, the quality of input in
English should be considered for improved English proficiency.
The input hypothesis emphasizes the importance of students receiving high-
quality input in the target language (Krashen 1985). This input must be
comprehensible to the student—through the use of context, body motions, concrete
objects, visual aids and so forth—but ideally just beyond their level of active
language knowledge. Traditional teaching methods, such as lecture, drill, and
reliance on textbooks, do not provide the comprehensible input posited as critical to
second language acquisition (Krashen 1982). Although a high school student may
be able to understand a lecture devoid of any visual aids in the first language (L1), a
lecture with similar content in L2 for a beginner in L2 would not be comprehensible.
Thus, the beginning L2 learner could spend all day attending lectures in L2 but
understand little. Although the student’s time-on-task would be great, the amount of
comprehensible input would be extremely low, and little second language
acquisition would be expected; rather, a student with much less time spent exposed
to L2, but engaged in, say, an age-appropriate and comprehensible game, would be
expected to acquire more L2.
Others emphasize the importance of interaction in creating comprehensible input
and in enhancing learners’ linguistic repertoire (Pica 1987; Pica et al. 1987). Through
checking for comprehension, asking clarifying questions and indicating non-
comprehension or confirming comprehension, a language learner can, in essence,
create comprehensible input by prompting the interlocutor to re-phrase, substitute a

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different word, simplify or elaborate a statement, and/or add information. Similarly,

the interlocutor provides important feedback to the learner by employing the same
strategies to elicit clarification from the learner. Learners whose utterances are not
understood are forced to stretch their linguistic repertoire by re-phrasing, substituting,
elaborating or simplifying, and/or adding information to make themselves compre-
hensible. Again, most classroom instruction does not provide opportunities for such
interactions.
In a model of how feedback affects second language acquisition, Vigil and Oller
(1976) hypothesized that both positive and negative feedback are essential to the
second language acquisition process. Long’s (1996) interaction hypothesis empha-
sized the importance of the role of conversation, especially between native and L2
speakers, to spur L2 speakers’ acquisition of the target language. Long theorized that
through negotiation for meaning, L2 learners may focus their attention on their (non-
standard) forms that are causing confusion thus opening them to acquire the standard
form if it is offered by a native speaker through a recast (restatement of a non-standard
form in the standard form). Recasts, a form of negative feedback, may be more helpful
to learning certain grammatical structures in a language than modeling (Long et al.
1998). Interactional feedback, such as negotiation for meaning and recasts, may be
particularly important to L2 acquisition in children (Mackey and Oliver 2002).
Swain (1985, 1995) emphasized the importance of output, or speech production,
in second language acquisition. Besides providing opportunities for feedback as
discussed above, output offers learners a chance for testing their hypotheses about
how the language works; it may also move learners from focusing on meaning to
analyzing syntax as they struggle to put words together in appropriate and
meaningful ways (Swain 1985). It may also offer learners the opportunity to
‘‘notice’’ (Swain 1995, p. 126) which grammatical forms they do not know well; in
addition, teachers may assign tasks which require students to grapple with
grammatical issues and thereby make students’ grammatical hypotheses explicit
(Swain 1995). Traditional classroom instruction often does not provide for much
production on the part of the students.
Singapore, with its exam-based education system, has mainly used traditional
methods of language teaching; the policy has focused on maximizing time exposed to
English, rather than the quality of the language teaching. Recent attempts to change to
a more communicative approach to language learning have largely been undermined
by the pressure to prepare students for exams (Cheah 1999). Singapore’s students
have done well on international exams (Martin et al. 1999; Mullis et al. 1999, 2003),
but their actual levels of oral English proficiency may not be so high. Again, without a
comparison group of students who studied English for fewer hours but with higher
quality input and/or more opportunities for interaction, it is difficult to determine
whether Singapore’s emphasis on time-on-task is justified or not.

Ability to learn more than one language is related to general education

achievement

In this general achievement view of education, some students are stronger, while
others are weaker, at learning in general; only the stronger students can handle a high

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level of language proficiency and literacy in two languages. This seems to follow the
theory of Charles Spearman and others that there is one general entity called
intelligence that governs a person’s ability in all areas of cognitive development
(Gardner 1983). In other words, students who are ‘quick’ at learning math, history and
science will also be better able to learn a second language at a high level; while those
who are ‘slower’ learners in their subject areas will not be able to learn two languages
at a high level. However, Howard Gardner and others propose a different view of
intelligence: that, rather than being one entity, intelligence can be divided into a
number of more specific intelligences (Gardner 1983). By Gardner’s theory, linguistic
intelligence, or the ability to learn and manipulate language, is separate from
mathematical or musical or other kinds of intelligence. In other words, a student who
excels in math may not be particularly strong in language, while one who excels in
language may not be strong in music. In fact, some researchers such as Pinker (1994)
posit an innate language acquisition faculty that is entirely separate from general
intelligence. Generally high academic achievement, then, may not predict a student’s
ability to attain high levels of proficiency in two languages, while low general
achievement may mask a student’s ability to learn two languages well.
In a study by Harley and Wang (1997), L2 proficiency as measured by an
interview was not linked with IQ for early total-immersion students, and it was more
highly correlated for late-immersion than for the early partial-immersion students
(Harley and Wang 1997); the authors suggest that the different teaching methods
involved may account for the older students’ performance.
Singapore policy has moved away from this assumption. At first, only those who
scored in the top 10% of the PSLE were eligible to study English and Mother Tongue
at an advanced level; these requirements were expanded to allow those who score in
the top 11–30% of the PSLE and who did very well on their Mother Tongue exam also
to take advanced Mother Tongue. Most recently, schools were granted the flexibility
to allow a student not meeting the official criteria to study advanced Mother Tongue if
the school believed it would not interfere with the student’s achievement in other
areas (Ministry of Education 2007c). This change seems to acknowledge the
possibility that a student who is not outstanding at every subject may be able to learn
two languages; however, the policy implies that students not in the top 30% of
achievement who will do well in two languages are exceptions. Subject-based
banding also acknowledges that students may reach different levels of achievement in
their different subjects, including their two languages, although it is generally
assumed that a lower-achieving student will not be capable of studying advanced
English or Mother Tongue. In addition, the study of a foreign language (French,
German or Japanese) is still restricted to students who score in the top 10% of the
PSLE and who show ‘‘special ability’’ in language (Ministry of Education 2007c).

Maintaining the ethnic language will protect ethnic identity, sense

of ‘rootedness’ and cultural values

As discussed above, the goal of Singapore’s bilingual education policy is not in fact
to create a general populace who are bilingual and biliterate at a high level; this
privilege is reserved for only the best language students. With the emphasis on

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Singapore’s language education policy assumptions 131

English, what, then, is the purpose of studying another language, the so-called
Mother Tongue? In discussing Chinese language education, Lee Kuan Yew wrote:
The greatest value in the teaching and learning of Chinese is in the
transmission of the norms of social or moral behaviour….
It would be a tragedy if we were to miss this and concentrate on second
language proficiency nearly equal to the first language. Malay children should
know their proverbs and their folklore…. For the Indians, the Ramayana and
the Mahabaratha provide marvelous and inexhaustible sources of stories….
That they also carry a moral message is the genius of the culture. No child
should leave school after 9 years without having the ‘soft-ware’ of his culture
programmed into his subconscious. (Goh 1979, p. v)
Early on, English was seen as the language of science and technology, while the
Mother Tongues were designated the transmitters of cultural values and norms (Rubdy
2001). The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis which posits the language one speaks in large part
determines the thoughts one can entertain (Kecskes and Papp 2000), could be used to
support this assumption. By this theory, if children did not learn their Mother Tongue,
they would be unable to gain access to the traditional thinking and values of their home
cultures. However, this theory, in its most strict form, has been rejected by modern
linguists who hold that any concept can be expressed in any language (Kecskes and
Papp 2000). This intertranslatability postulate indicates that English as well as the
Mother Tongues could be used to express and transmit traditional cultural values.
A Vygotskian-based sociocultural theory of the relationship between language and
thought is less deterministic than the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis but would more subtly
support this assumption. By this theory, ethnic languages emphasize culturally-
important concepts and categories (Kecskes and Papp 2000); thus, learning a language
reinforces the associated cultural values. Fishman (1977) states that language
constitutes a powerful symbol of ethnicity; maintaining ethnic languages can serve to
maintain ethnic-group boundaries. However, it is difficult through any of these theories
to determine whether learning an ethnically-related but non-native language would
carry out the desired function of passing on cultural traditions, values and norms.
In the case of Singapore, the government has not apparently tried to judge the
success of passing on traditional values through the Mother Tongues. The success of
the ‘‘Speak Mandarin’’ campaign is measured by the shift of language use at home,
work, and in everyday transactions to Mandarin, not the maintenance of Chinese
cultural values (Newman 1988; Riney 1998). In fact, it has been claimed that although
Indians have undergone the greatest language shift to English, they have maintained
their traditional values more than Chinese (Pakir 1993; Riney 1998). If this is the case,
factors other than language must be responsible for the maintenance or loss of
traditional values.

Conclusion

The Singapore case seems to lend credence to both the instrumentalist and
sociolinguistic views of language planning. Instrumentalists may champion the

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success3 of the Speak Mandarin campaign, which promoted a simpler standardized

language over home dialects despite little evidence of a pre-existing trend in that
direction. Chinese were increasingly sending their children to English-medium
schools, which might have killed Mandarin in Singapore if the government had not
required Mandarin as a school subject and promoted its use outside school. At the
same time, however, sociolinguists can point to Mandarin’s existing high status
among Chinese as reason for the policy’s success. In addition, sociolinguists can
indicate the shift to English as an example of a government simply encouraging the
existing sociocultural trend toward choosing economically-beneficial English
education over other languages. The government waited to institute English-
medium education for all until the vast majority of parents had already chosen it.
The case of Tamil may bolster the instrumentalists’ claim that a simpler language is
better suited for education, regardless of its status.
It is hard to know whether the Singapore government’s prescriptive stance will be
vindicated, or whether Singaporeans will persist in using Singlish and Chinese
dialects. Sociolinguists would argue that Singlish is impossible to stop, and will not
be harmful if maintained as an informal register alongside the Standard English
promoted by the government as the formal register. Although the government’s
Speak Mandarin campaign has precipitated a large shift away from Chinese dialects
toward Mandarin, the dialects have shown surprising persistence in some domains
(see, e.g., Xu 1999, p. 196).
Singapore’s experience does not resolve any of the ongoing debates in the field of
second language acquisition, as it followed a uniform policy and did not experiment
with early versus late introduction of English, differing amounts of English
exposure, or diverse pedagogies. However, it certainly shows that a nation can
successfully implement widespread education through a non-native medium starting
at an early age with little home-language development and achieve good academic4
results. Whether these results are replicable in countries with very different
circumstances remains an open question. Singapore began its nationhood with a
serious crisis, perhaps leading its people to accept governmental policy more
readily, especially as promised stability and economic gains materialized.
While Singapore seems to have achieved the major goals it set for language and
education policy, the loss of some of the rich linguistic diversity and the shift from
multilingualism to bilingualism may have unintended consequences. Pakir (1993,
p. 83) reported that in an interview with Taiwanese journalists in 1989, Lee Kuan
Yew
said that if he had had the chance to go back to 1965 or 1970, he would have
kept the Chinese primary school, increased the English in it as the second

3
Success of the Speak Mandarin policy is here defined as the language shift from dialects to Mandarin
documented by the census reports and other studies. No claims are made as to the actual level of
proficiency achieved.
4
The best measure of success would of course be whether these students are successful in their careers at
the conclusion of their schooling. However, data on ultimate outcomes are unavailable. The international
tests (e.g., TIMSS, PIRLS) are considered good measures of academic achievement, since they are not
designed to match any particular country’s curriculum.

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Singapore’s language education policy assumptions 133

language, and encouraged parents to send their children to the Chinese

language school. Then, he would have given an additional year (either at
primary or secondary level) to help the average student change from Chinese
as First Language learning to English as First Language learning.
This same principle could have been extended to the Malay- and Tamil-medium
schools as well. Would there have been a difference in attainment of English? In
attainment of Mother Tongue? In overall educational achievement? Or, as Lee
believes, in maintenance of traditional values? One cannot turn back the clock to try
a different scenario; however, other countries looking to replicate Singapore’s
educational and economic success should consider these questions in their own
context.
Now, Singapore seems on an unalterable course from a diverse multilingualism
to a more uniform bilingualism in English and one other official language. As the
trend toward English and official languages continues, will Singapore become more
of a monolingual English-speaking country, with Mother Tongues reduced to a
school subject only? Will a shift to English dominance impair the transmission of
traditional values to the next generation? The Singapore case will continue to offer
fascinating data to language policy analysts and second language acquisition
researchers for decades to come.

Acknowledgments Much of the work that became the basis of this paper was completed as part of the
author’s qualifying paper at Harvard University Graduate School of Education. The author would like to
acknowledge and thank her advisor, Professor Maria Carlo, and the members of her committee,
Professors Catherine Snow and Carola Suarez-Orozco, for their very helpful advice and guidance on the
development of the paper. A Spencer Research Training Grant funded work with Prof. Snow which led to
the development of this paper. Portions of an earlier version of this paper were presented at the 4th
International Symposium on Bilingualism (April–May 2003) and the American Association for Applied
Linguistics annual meeting (March 2003). The author would also like to thank Professors Zohreh Eslami
and Yolanda Padron of Texas A&M University and three anonymous reviewers for their very helpful
comments and suggestions.

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Author Biography

L. Quentin Dixon is an assistant professor in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture in the
College of Education and Human Development at Texas A&M University. She holds a B.A. in

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Anthropology from Bryn Mawr College, and an Ed.M. and an Ed.D. in Human Development and
Psychology, specializing in Language and Literacy, from Harvard University Graduate School of Edu-
cation. Dr. Dixon’s research interests focus on the language and literacy development of young English
language learners, on creating effective educational programs for English language learners, and in using
rigorous quantitative research methods to evaluate educational programs for English language learners.
Prior to graduate school, Dr. Dixon taught English as a second language in public elementary schools near
Seattle, WA.

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